Followers

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Religion is the Opium of the People

Karl Marx wasn’t kidding. Police in the Parisian suburb of La Verriere failed find a trace of any other hallucinogenic drug after a family of 12 leapt from their second floor balcony claiming to be fleeing Beelzebub. According to police, the incident occurred when a wife awoke to find her husband moving about naked in the room. She began screaming 'It's the devil! It's the devil!' and the man ran into the next room where the others were watching TV. One woman grabbed a knife and stabbed him before others pushed him out through the front door. When he forced his way back in, the terrified lot leapt from the balcony screaming 'Jesus! Jesus!' Inexplicably, the nudist also leapt from the balcony. Detectives are treating it as a case of mistaken identity.

Zimbabwe’s Governor of the Reserve Bank, Gideon Gono, likes to portray himself as very religious. He is apt to quote the Bible in his speeches, sometimes adding a few revelations of his own, such when he divulged God’s advice to Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane: "My Son, take it like a man …" Last week, however, it was reported that Sabina Mugabe, the younger sister of octagenarian president Robert Mugabe, had had a revelation of her own to make regarding Gono. Shortly before she died three months ago, she reportedly told her brother that Gono and Mugabe’s wife of 14 years, Grace, had been making a cuckold of him. Though the President is said to be "ready to go to war," things might still turn out OK for the former tea-boy. As one intelligence official put it, "once Mugabe hears something like that, I think someone will go and meet God."

Many self-declared religious types abhor any discussion of sex outside the home. In keeping with this, an Australian church has kicked out a woman who dared to act in an impotence treatment ad. Libby Ashby told the Melbourne-based radio station, 3AW, that she had been “disfellowshipped” from her local congregation, following her starring role in a commercial where seems to use her husband’s erect penis as a stepping stone to higher things. In the ad, after she asks for his help to reach a container above the fridge, he opens up his dressing gown to reveal a sight which the viewer can’t see – but which she is clearly happy about. Ashby then steps onto the hidden prop and gets the jar. The single mother said she knew the advert would be controversial with church-goers but a lack of funds left her with little option. “My Visa was calling out for mercy,” she revealed. The church is unlikely to be so charitable. “They have said I will not be reinstated until the advert comes off air,” Ashby said.

In a bid to restore morality and fight the vice of sexual harassment, the mayor of the Italian sea-side town of Castellammare di Stabia, south of Naples, has ordered his police to fine women who wear 'very short' miniskirts or tops that display too much cleavage. Luigi Bobbio, who was elected on Silvio Berlusconi's People of Freedom party ticket, won a council vote to ban anything that doesn’t fully cover underwear. Police, who now have the authority to hand out fines of up to $450, were however cautioned against being too zealous identifying offenders. "They won't need to carry out checks up close. One glance will be enough to judge," said mayor Bobbio, who also wishes to criminalize blasphemy and playing football in public parks.

Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki’s sermons about the evils of corruption have a decidedly hollow ring to them. While campaigning for re-election three years ago, he promised to run a clean government. Now, barely a week after he and Prime Minister, Raila Odinga, were forced to suspended William Ruto, a cabinet minister facing graft charges, another, Foreign Affairs Minister Moses Wetangula has resigned (or in the parlance of the day, stepped aside to allow for investigations) after he was named in a parliamentary report looking into shenanigans surrounding the acquisition of property by Kenyan embassies abroad. And that may not be the end of it. Other members of the “clean” cabinet with the proverbial Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads include Kiraitu Murungi (under whose watch $100 million worth of oil disappeared in the Triton Oil scandal), Prof. Sam Ongeri (in charge when another $100 million in free education funds went missing) and Naomi Shaaban (whose ministry was blamed for the loss of $2.5 million meant of resettling the internally displaced).